paper given at IMAGINING IRELAND
conference

ABSTRACT: Biddy, Bella and the big issues of the day

How far can contemporary Ireland
recognise itself in Glenroe and Fair City ? To what extent do its characters,
settings and storylines testify to the temper of the times? What relation
do these serials bear to the lives we lead ?

This paper will look at
Ireland's two currently running television serials in terms of the larger
pattern of social experience. It will query both the presences and the
absences in their representation of contemporary Ireland. It will explore
the soap opera form in terms of its potential for imagining Ireland in
a more expansive and penetrating fashion. It will draw strong conclusions
about the failure of existing serials to fulfill this potential.

Soap
Opera and Social OrderWhat is the relation between
soap operas and the social order in which they are set and seen ?To what extent is it possible
to trace the temper of the times in television serials ?

Television soap operas came
into the world and into my own life in America in the 1950s. It was
my mother and not me who was their target audience, but I saw as much of
them as school holidays and parental indulgence would allow. They
were utterly addictive and I have been hooked since then. Women would
organise their days around their "stories" and they became an essential
ritual of everyday life. These stories were meant to be about ordinary
lives of ordinary people in ordinary towns of the time, although it was
extraordinary how many affairs, surprise appearances and disappearances,
exotic diseases, afflictions of amnesia, murders, kidnappings and frauds
befell such a small number of characters in such small towns.

Looking back on them, they
nevertheless seem an integral part of that world. They were populated
with fictional ensembles of people of the time. Their views and their
values, their myopia and their innocence, was that of the age. What
was not so innocent was of the age as well.These
serials all had grand cosmological titles like The Guiding Light, Love
of Life, Search for Tomorrow, As the World Turns, Days of Our Lives, Secret
Storm, One Life to Live, The Edge of Night, Another World. The underlying
philosophies consisted of such bland maxims as the wise-sounding but intellectually
empty declarations as the daily voice-over which announced:

"As the sands of the hourglass, so are the days of our lives."

These daytime dramas did
take up matters rarely permitted on primetime television then, such asmarital
breakdown, frigidity, extramarital sex, alcoholism, professional malpractice.
They did so,however, within tightly circumscribed
boundaries. Although these serials featured many transgressions
of traditional values, it was unthinkable to question those values.
Whateverproblems and pitfalls characters encountered
in their pursuit of the American dream, they never ceased to believe in
it. Their tragedies were due to natural disasters or human failings,
but there was nothing wrong with God, marriage, motherhood, apple pie or
the American way.

This was by and large what
most people in this society naively believed. It was certainly
what everyone I knew believed. However, for those who did see
beyond it and would have raised further questions, there was always the
blacklist to prevent them. It was a conservative formproduced
by an extremely conservative and confident society.

However, "the times
they were a changin" and so was soap opera, although not without time-lag,
evasion, distortion and co-optation.

Meanwhile, other societies
took up the genre and made it their own. In Britain, Coronation Street
began its long life, followed by Crossroads and later by Brookside and
Eastenders, not to mention those which fell along the wayside at various
stages, such as Albion Market and Eldorado.

In Ireland, the first serial
to take off was Tolka Row, meant to be Ireland's answer to Coronation Street.
It began its 5 year run in 1964 and it was the only RTE experiment in an
urban serial tocapture the imagination of its audience
and to live on in folk memory. The shorter-lived The Spikehas a special
place in folk memory too, but that is a different story.

In 1965, RTE opened up what
has been the most successful and the most enduring line of development
in indigenous soap opera, that of the rural serial, beginning with the
15 year run of The Riordans, bridged by the series Bracken (built
around the character of Pat Barry from the last
days of The Riordans) and taken up by Glenroe (built around the Byrnes
from Bracken) running for 10 years so far and likely to continue for some
time yet.

To what extent can this
fictional trajectory be seen as tracking the social history of Ireland
during these years ? As I have written about this at some length
in my book at least up to 1987,I shall only summarise
my argument here and then take it up for the period since 1987.

The Riordans and RTE itself
emerged into the midst of the Ireland of the Lemass era and was an integral
part of the struggle between liberal and conservative views and values
that was playing itself out with some vigour in these years.
The Riordans was firmly modernising in its mission,while
giving sensitive and sympathetic expression to traditional values.
Despite being given avoice in such well drawn characters
as Mary Riordan, this section of the society did not respond well to their
values being challenged in any way at all. They mobilised again and
again to put pressure on RTE and the programme was surrounded by considerable
controversy.

It has been said that
the two strongest forces battling it out in RTE over the years were the
Knights of Columbanus on the one side and Official Sinn Fein / Workers
Party on the other. Thestrength and influence
of both has always been exaggerated in my opinion. What has always
prevailed has been the liberal consensus.

When RTE drama was at its
bravest and its best, that is in the 1970s, particularly the late 1970s,
liberal views and values were struggling against still strong and effectively
mobilised conservative forces. The best drama was a dramatisation
of this struggle, both in soap opera andother genre
(which still existed and even flourished at that time). The left, which
was more than Sinn Fein: The Workers Party, came in behind the liberal
position and gave it added edge, butnever really
pushed for the representation of a more radical position in drama production.
Myown research revealed to me again and again programme
makers who were much more radical thanany programmes
they made.

RTE sometimes fought bravely
and sometimes cringed cravenly in the face of the backlash thatcame at
it. This has arguably left a legacy of caution in the aftermath of
confrontations in whichRTE was blooded in the process.

This is only one factor,
however, in the shifting landscape of television drama as it moved throughthe
1980s and into the 1990s. During this time, there has been
much less drama and what therehas been has been much
more tame. Why ? The changing climate of international broadcasting,the
erosion of the ethos of public service broadcasting, the accelerating costs
of drama productionare also factors, but still do not constitute sufficient
explanation in my opinion.

The liberal consensus seems
to have lost its drive and its verve with the weakening of forces tothe
left and right of it. Traditionalist forces are no longer as strong
as they were and significantliberal values have been
accepted by the new right, which is now a far more formidable force thanwhat
is left of the old right. Radical forces are going through a period
of defeat and disarray.Liberal forces, left to themselves,
tend to be bland and confused without the pressure of forcesto
the left and right of them.

It is not that Irish
society has settled into some sort of insipid unanimity. It is a
society moredeeply divided than ever it was, a society
of more various views and values than ever existed before. However,
it is a more complex and confused society, a society in which the battle
lines arenot so clearly drawn, a society that seems
unable to imagine itself dramatically.

It is not that it does not
plod along and try and achieve something along the way. It is not
thatGlenroe and Fair City bear no resemblance at
all to the society in which we live. There is muchthat
we recognise, much that charts the difference between the way we were and
the way we arenow (show recent scene from Glenroe).
Our soap operas are more stylish and technically sophisticatedthan
ever before. The society they portray is more complex than ever before.
Certainly thewomen are more liberated and the lifestyles
are more various than ever before.

However, there is so much
left out, so much of this society as I experience it missing, that watching
these programmes is a source of constant disappointment to me.

Glenroe, now in its 11th
year, came on to the scene in 1983 and won a special place in the heartsof
an audience whose screens were dominated by Dallas and Dynasty and Falcon
Crest as well asCoronation Street and Emmerdale Farm
and Brookside and Eastenders. It was more honest anddown-to-earth
than the prototypical productions of glitzy, yuppie, junk bond Reaganite
America,although it did not probe very far into the
problematic areas of contemporary society as did theserials
which managed to survive in Thacherite Britain. But it was ours.

From the beginning, Wesley
Burrowes, mastermind of this whole line of development of the rural serial,
disclaimed any "social motivation" in Glenroe. He proclaimed that
it was unnatural to seea small community as a microcosm
of the social problems of the nation. He said that his hands wereraw
from grasping nettles, as he had done in The Riordans, and that Glenroe
would be "not aboutissues, but about people and about their relationships".
It was meant to be entertainment and not sociology.

I disagree profoundly with
this approach and often argued the toss with Wesley Burrowes when I was
involved with Glenroe in my research and I elaborated the argument at some
length whenthe book was written.

Although I have watched
it faithfully in the years since, seen all sorts of characters come and
goand all sorts of storylines opened up and closed
down, my analysis of Glenroe would besubstantially
the same as it was in 1987.

Despite Wesley Burrowes's
disclaimers, Glenroe probably had more edge to it in its first year than
at any time since, when its characters were presented as struggling small
farmers, challengingthe operation of market forces
and formed by the ethos of co-operative principles. Also there was
irony and insight in the storylines built around the dynamics of blow-ins
finding their way in anestablished community and
the mating rituals of the young and single, as well as of the not-so-young
and not-so-single.

Biddy Mc Dermott especially
was an excellent character, one than rang the changes of the era. She was
deferred to for her horticultural expertise and her hard work, which left
many a man inthe shade. She showed leadership
qualities as chairperson of the Growers Association. She spoke her
mind and bought her round. She was at the same time a very sexual
young woman, even if notso confident in this sphere
as she was in other matters. She was liberated enough to reject the
coquettish ways of her sister Carol, but traditional enough that she had
to wait to be asked andwait she surely had to do when it was Miley Byrne
to do the asking.

Characterisation on the
whole has been very credible and storylines at their best have explored
the growing edges of Irish society, especially in highlighting the tensions
and ironies runningalong the interface between the
old and the new. Dinny Byrne especially embodied the peasant psyche
rooted in centuries of experience of those who were landless or near landless
yet trappedon the land. Things like the tie
of sex to land and livestock were etched in his brain and ran in his blood.
Yet he was constantly counterpointed by codes and choices made by other
criteria, charting the changes in the experience of class and gender.

However, Glenroe has drifted
more and more into a preoccupation with the personal problems of people
of property and a soft-centred indulgence of the minor joys and sorrows
of their lives.In a period of recession, when
substantial sections of the population have been threatened with marginalisation
and impoverishment, it has not been telling the truth of the times to construct
ascenario where sudden unearned wealth and/or entrepreneurial
skill has made virtually everycharacter upwardly
mobile and prosperous. It gave a very easy ride to the spirit of
theentrepreneurial 80s.

Sudden windfalls came the
way of Mary Mc Dermott, Dinny Byrne, Paddy Maher and Teasy Mc Daidduring
a period in which the writing of Glenroe seemed to be more influenced by
Dallas andDynasty than anything happening in Ireland.
Even after Wesley Burrowes confessed to being abit
conscience stricken over the fact that everyone in Glenroe was so comfortable
and heintroduced the character of Chuck, a working
class kid supporting a family, to redress thebalance,
Chuck too turned out to be so upwardly mobile as to have last year returned
from Australia as a successful businessman beginning
a substantial business in Glenroe with Dick Moranworking
for him. Fr. Devereaux is the latest to come into big money and I wouldn't
be surprisedif it becomes the means of making a rich
businessman of Blackie Connors. Lately Biddy and Mileyare
feeling the pinch and we shall see where that is going.

For much of the time Glenroe
seems curiously cut off from anything outside itself, caught up inits own
cosiness and cuteness, sometimes aimlessly recycling some of the more throwaway
plotsfrom The Riordans. Despite a change
in production schedules to eliminate much of the lag between production
and transmission and to allow for greater topicality, it has not done much
with itexcept to have Christmas episodes for Christmas
and spring weather for spring planting.

Although Glenroe has thrown
up attractive characters and set them in amusing interaction witheach other,
it has tended to skate across the surface of the human condition, rather
than toengage in a more penetrating scrutiny of the
human psyche. There has been no character articulating
an advanced idea or expressing really deep emotion. There has been
no intellectual,emotional or moral edge to it, no
great thirst for truth or justice, no deep searching of the soul.

There has been no questioning
of Catholic doctrine in principle, whatever the falling off inpractice.
There has been no challenge to the status quo, whether of church or state
ormarketplace, in any sort of fundamental way.

While it has not been deep
or daring, it has been clever and charming. It is a programme forwhich I feel a special fondness as I was very involved with
it when writing my book (which waslaunched
by Mick Lally) and I learned much of what I know about television
production from mytime in studio and on location
when it was being made. I still believe that it could open out anddevelop
in new directions and come to the cutting edge of contemporary experience
and besomething more special than it already is.

Fair Citycame on
the scene to answer the strongly felt need for contemporary urban drama
afterother 1980s attempts to fill this gap
fell flat, most notably Inside. Inside was clearly a cul de sac,being
set in a prison and based on a caricature of urban life, ie, what could
be more characteristicof a city than crime ?
There was in the 1980s a sharp debate about drama policy in RTE (related
in my book and enhanced by the publication of the book itself), which focused
on the need fordrama at the cutting edge of contemporary
life. However, despite all the pressures inside andoutside
RTE, the situation has not only not improved, but it has substantially
disimproved. Thereis less drama than ever and what there is tamer
than ever.

Beginning in 1989 and now
in its 5th year, Fair City has not yet fulfilled the hopes which were invested
in it. Although it has achieved high TAM ratings, it has not captured
the popularimagination, although I believe that it
still has the potential to do so.

The opening sequence (on
video) evokes Dublin, but Carrigstown does not feel to me like Dublin.
It is more like a 1950s rural village than a 1990s city. Everybody
lives in each other's pockets andknows each other's
business. Nearly everybody works in the immediate area. This
is soap opera convention, but it is not urban life. The only serial
to break with this has been Brookside, where characters lived in Brookside
Close but moved about and worked in the larger city in a way that worked
and opened up new territory for the genre, even if it has collapsed back
into the convention now, with nearly everybody living and working in each
other's pockets.

Those involved in the production
of Fair City, to whom I have been talking while writing thispaper,
answer that the budget does not allow for location shooting. I do
believe that Fair Cityshould be given the resources
necessary for location shooting, and if it needs to be taken fromEurovision
or Rose of Tralee, so be it. However, I don't believe than this alone would
solve theproblem, because I think it goes deeper.
It is a problem of vision.

Even without location shooting,
dialogue could refer outward in a way that it rarely does.Characters
could come and go from the larger city and they could read books and newspapers,
listen to radio, watch television, communicate by fax and e-mail: in countless
ways they could beconstructed in a conscious and
dynamic relationship to the wider world.

There is an enormous defensiveness
among those who work in the area of tv drama about socialissues.
Those currently involved in making both Glenroe and Fair City argue that
the role of theirprogrammes is to entertain.
Their serials are to be about people and their relationships. However,if
issues arise out of characters and their interactions, they inevitably
say, they will deal withthem.

However, this begs all the
questions, such as what people find entertaining and why. It
evadesdealing with the fact that the whole thing
is their construction. The characters and theirinteraction
are their constructions. The whole scenario can be constructed in
such a way as tobe either expansive or myopic in
its relation to the social order. It can either look outward at theworld
in tune with the relevant rhythms in the lives of interesting characters
living interestinglives or it can be turned in on
the trivial details of characters who live in cosy claustrophobia (and
doing so without insight into the cosiness and claustrophobia).

The soap opera may be in
its conventions a cosy and conservative form, with its origins in an extremely
cosy and conservative society, but it is nevertheless a form which has
enormouspotential to open out and to show the structure
of the social order and to probe the human psycheas it shaped by the social
order. There is so much time to develop character, so much scope toelaborate
the twists and turns of storylines. Instead of fulfilling this potential,
soap operas havetended to go round and round, recycling
soap opera cliches, rather than venturing into this almost
uncharted territory.

For most of Fair City, characters
have come and gone, consumed their pizzas and pints, done theirdeals, had
their flirtations and affairs, their births, marriages, separations and
deaths in a so-what sort of way, without sufficient rhyme or reason, without
specific texture, without particularperception.

I do think that Fair City
is improving. Running storylines which seem fruitful are: Rita going
back to school and doing her leaving cert English, Bella adjusting to living
in a flat out ofCarrigstown, Barry's ideas about
running the school, Natalie planning to come back to work after her baby
is born not knowing those who smile and tell her to take care are plotting
against her.Bits of dialogue giving it more texture:
Natalie referring to her baby as "yer wan kickin' away likePaul
Mc Grath" and Lorraine wanting to stay in the room because it was "all
part of familyinteraction. We learned it in life
skills".

But Fair City needs to engage
with the society in which it is set in more ways than this, as does Glenroe.
Here are some questions I ask those who make these programmes:

What do Biddy and
Bella think about the big issues of our times ?Does anyone in Glenroe
or Carrigstown have left or right wing views ?Has anyone noticed that
the map of the world has been redrawn ? (massive world historical
events, which turned my world upside down, registered
only in the Manning's adoption of a Romanian child)Did anyone notice that
Ireland elected a feminist President ?Does anyone vote ?Has anyone ever been to
Belfast ?Were the residents of Glenroe
and Carrigstown the only people in Irelandwith no
opinion on the X case ?Are they the only ones
in the country not to make remarks about bishops and babies ?Is everyone a religious
believer ? (except
for Rory, who is also a greasy, lying, swindling, drug dealer)Will GATT agreement or
structural funds allocation affect them ?Does anyone belong to a
trade union ?Does no local TD ever come
into Teasy's or Mc Coys ?Does no one go to TCD,
UCD, DCU or any 3rd level educational institution ?Does no one work at Intel
or Unidare or Aer Lingus ?Why do such a disproportionate
number of characters own small businesses and those few who work for a
wage work for them ?Is Clancy supposed to represent
the whole capitalist system ?

It is not that any one of these
absences is that conclusive, but taken together they indicate what I at
least find missing, at least the surface of what I find missing.
But, staying on the surface fora minute, let me indicate
some characters I would like some day to see: a married laicised priest,a
nun who lives in a flat after coming under the influence of liberation
theology in Latin America, a trade union official, a programme manager,
a GPA executive, a computer hacker, a philosopher (why not ?),a novelist,
a journalism student, a night cleaner, a carpenter who can only find work
in the blackeconomy, a person who is long term unemployed,
a punter who votes PD and thinks The Sunday Independent is the fount of
all wisdom, a communist whose life came into crisis in 1989.

Why not ? There is
authentic drama in these lives. I am speaking here out of my own
life and thelives of those I encounter in my own
life, which is far more dramatic than anything I see calleddrama
on television. Everyone will have their own list of elements in their
own experience cryingout for dramatic representation
and being left undramatised.

Adding such characters would
not solve the problem in itself, but written well they could openout the
scenario to show the structure of the social order in terms of the rhythms
of everydaylives. But to show the structure
of the social order, it is necessary to see the structure of thesocial
order and here is the real problem, why our serials only skate the surface
of our times anddo not penetrate to the deep structures.
It is not simply an aesthetic matter. It is anepistemological
problem. It is rooted in the contemporary crisis in narrativity,
which is rootedin a deeper crisis of world view.
To quote Lukacs:

" Without a Weltanschauung,
it is impossible to narrate properly or to achievea
composition which would reflect the differentiated and epochally complete
variety of life."

The problem of Glenroe and
Fair City is the problem of imagining Ireland, particularly for the liberal
intelligentsia, which is the force predominating in RTE and in drama production.
Theliberal intelligentsia is itself, by the way,
the most unrepresented force in our drama, which is noaccident.
They do not see themselves and their society with the clarity necessary
for perceptiveand powerful drama. Narrative competence and dramatic
drive are rooted in definite point of view.

The problem of soap opera
in our society is a problem of vision.

paper given at IMAGINING IRELAND ConferenceIrish Film
Centre,Dublin,
31 October 1993

An updated analysis of Glenroe
(taking it up to its final episode in 2001) and Fair City (taking it to
2002)will appear in a new bookTracking the Tiger: The Continuing Story
of Irish Television Dramato be published by 4 Courts
Press in 2002.This book is a sequel to
Irish
Television Drama: A Society and Its Stories RTE 1987.It takes the story forward
another 15 years.